Preparations needed for next global disaster

After two-and-a-half years of lockdowns, quarantines and mask mandates amid the COVID-19 pandemic, billions of people around the world believes that they have returned to normal lives. But in many ways, this newfound sense of normalcy is misleading.

Beating COVID-19 will not mark the end of our current age of global instability, but rather the end of the beginning.

Of course, it is important to remember that the battle against COVID-19 is still far from over. More people have been infected in 2022 than in the previous two years combined, and while vaccines have brought down death rates, more than a million people worldwide have died this year after contracting the virus. And as governments begin to roll out updated booster shots, the world must brace itself for a major autumn surge and the possible emergence of dangerous new variants.

But even if COVID-19 were to disappear soon, our goal must not be to return to the pre-COVID status quo. In the pre-pandemic world, governments and communities were woefully ill-prepared — not just for a deadly pathogen, but also for an explosive confluence of political and economic crises. If we continue to view “the end of this pandemic” as our only goal, the new normal will be just as fragile as the old one.

Global leaders should recognize that, far from being an outlier, the pandemic might be a harbinger. Even as COVID-19 continues to spread, the likelihood of another pandemic increases by 2 percent each year. Moreover, the threat of new pandemics is just one of several looming catastrophes — which also include climate

“We’ll use different technical approaches, including geomagnetic, optical and cosmogenic nuclides dating methods,” Gao said. “It will take at least another half a year to make a scientific judgment. Dating will not only focus on the skull, but also spread across the whole site to get a more reliable reference.

“Thanks to more advanced technologies, I hope we can narrow the time span of our speculation this time,” he said.

All sediments found in the working area will be taken to a lab for long-term studies that will also involve environmental sciences, geology, molecular biology and other branches of natural science.

“Our current findings have shown that human evolution in East Asia was continuous,” Gao said. “The links between Homo erectus and later Homo sapiens are still unclear, but this issue is a key to decoding the origins of modern human beings in East Asia. Indisputably, the skull fossil can provide crucial evidence.”